Eye-Man
by CritterKeeper
Summary: You'll see....


This one is sort of a cross-over with the X-Men movie, but not exactly. You'll see what I mean. I've never read the comics, so erase them from your mind and just picture the characters from the movie.  
  
  
The Eye-Man  
by CritterKeeper  
  
  
Darien Fawkes bounded into the Keep, grinning. The Keeper was working on something at one of her lab benches, but she turned to greet him with a smile.  
  
"Darien! Back so soon?"  
  
"You know I can't resist this place, Claire." He perched on his chair sideways, one leg folded up beneath him. "All in the line of duty, fighting for truth, justice, the American way, all that crap."  
  
"Is that what has you grinning ear to ear?"  
  
"No, that's at the great irony of life." Claire was sure that if she could see his eyes, they'd be twinkling now. "I got to break into a bank vault!" Her stunned expression only encouraged him. "A couple of would-be robbers. They took a bunch of people hostage, and locked them in the vault. Only trouble is, they didn't realize there was a time lock on it, no way to get them back out again before they ran out of air."  
  
"Are you telling me you blasted your way through a bank vault door? I hope you didn't let anyone see you at work!"  
  
"Relax, Keep. Any security cameras the bad guys didn't take out, Hobbes took care of. We cleared the room. Hobbes had a briefcase, said he had classified equipment in there, could only use it if everyone got out first." He tilted his head in his equivalent of a wink. "Sure was fun, though. What I couldn't have done with this a couple of years ago...."  
  
Claire shoved him back onto the reclining chair; Darien obediently settled into position, laughing inside at her reaction. "Got your eyes closed?" she asked, and he felt her pull away the visor that covered his eyes. He could picture her running her fingers over the lenses, testing their remaining thickness.  
  
His mind drifted back to the time, months ago, when the Official first came to him....  
  
  
  
He kept a bandage over his eyes, back then. Not that it would provide any protection if he opened them, but at least it helped to remind him, in unguarded moments, not to look. He hadn't looked at anything in so long. At least, not without seeing it disintegrate before his eyes.  
  
His eyes. Why, oh why did he ever say yes to Kevin's offer? Why didn't he ask more questions about the down side? And why couldn't he have convinced Kevin that Arnaud was bad news *before* that Swiss Miss had a chance to sabotage the project?  
  
Running his fingers across the cold marble, he could trace his brother's name, carved into the stone. The warm sun on his face and hands seemed out of place as he knelt by the tombstone, wondering what the hell he was supposed to do now.  
  
"Let me get this straight," he asked the unseen figure behind him, "you want to hire me?"  
  
"Face it, kid, you're not exactly cut out for your old profession any more. Work with us, you have a chance to do some good. To make use of your brother's gift."  
  
Gift. Right. "What are you going to do, give me a guide dog? Have somebody point my head at the bad guys and say, 'Okay, open your eyes now!'" He snorted. "Arnaud took away any chance at this thing being useful. What good am I if I can't see anything but destruction?" He pressed his hands flat against the cold marble.  
  
He heard something land on the ground by his knees. He made no move towards it, yet.  
  
"What is it?"  
  
"It's an option."  
  
"What kind of option?"  
  
"See for yourself."  
  
He felt the ground before him, grumbling. "Ha, ha, very funny." His fingers found something hard and smooth. He picked it up, began feeling out its shape.  
  
"I mean it, kid. Literally."  
  
They felt almost like a pair of sunglasses, except the frames extended around the sides, so that they would fit flush against his skin. The lenses were thick, and somehow didn't feel like glass or plastic. He turned a questioning face towards the Official.  
  
"They're made with a particular kind of ruby quartz. According to the data we were able to salvage, they should be able to block the frequency of your optic blast, and still let the rest of the spectrum through. You can see again, kid."  
  
Darien hardly dared believe it. He wanted to see again so badly, he could taste it. But he didn't trust this man, didn't trust what he represented. One hand clutched the glasses, the other rested against his brother's tombstone, fingers pressing into the rock hard enough to turn his knuckles white. "What's the catch?"  
  
"Your blast will wear away at it over time. The lenses will need to be replaced every few days. We're working on coming up with new formulas that will last longer, but we can't do it without you to try them out on."  
  
"So I'd have to depend on you for new ones? That sounds way too much like the scam Arnaud tried to pull on me."  
  
"What can I say? It's a good scam."  
  
"No, it's not good. You'd hold my vision hostage, risk me forgetting myself and blasting some poor schmuck who's just passing by, make me do God knows what, it's not good at all. It's --"  
  
"Evil? Well, my dear old mother used to say, 'Anything done out of love is beyond good and evil.' And I do love my job." Darien heard him step closer, felt the cool of his shadow falling across him, could picture him holding out a hand, offering to help him up. "It's also your best chance of tracking down Arnaud, of stopping him before he screws up anyone else's life. Of getting justice for your brother. So, what do you say?"  
  
  
  
"I've got something new for you to try out, Darien." Claire's voice, from over by her workbench, drew Darien out of his reverie. "It's a modification of the control system. Uses an electrical current, applied just so, to alter the permeability of the quartz to your optic blast. It should give you much finer control of how powerful the beam is."  
  
He could hear the familiar sounds of Claire fitting his old lenses into the equipment that would measure their remaining thickness precisely, as well as how degraded the remaining material was.  
  
"Here, catch!" the Keeper called out to him, and he obediently held out his open hand just in time for her to settle the new visor gently against his palm. He closed his fingers around it and began exploring its shape. There was a dial on the right side, which was new, and a little lever, like on his old one. It moved silently, between two positions, instead of sliding through a range of settings. He'd be able to adjust the strength of the beam before firing, instead of having to tune it in progress.  
  
"Want me to try them on?"   
"You can test the fit, but don't open your eyes until I'm done with this." He could hear her gasp as she got the reading. He was in for a scolding now. "Darien, you cut that *way* too close! There's hardly anything left to them. You don't *want* to be left without any protection, do you?"  
  
"I figured it must be pretty close," Darien replied quietly. "I had Hobbes drive back, I sat with my eyes closed the whole way." He wished he could look her in the eye. "It's not that easy to judge, sometimes, you know."  
  
The Keeper was coming back over to his side now. She placed a sympathetic hand on his shoulder. "I'm sorry, Darien. I should know better." Her voice turned cheerful as she checked over the fit of the new visor. "Actually, that's another thing this new gear should help you with. The electrical current can give us feedback on how much lens you have left." She guided his head back into position. "There, now try opening your eyes."  
  
He looked straight ahead. A thick reinforced concrete barrier was set up before the chair; so long as he stayed put, his blast couldn't do too much damage if anything went wrong with the new visor. He held his breath and opened his eyes.  
  
Nothing. He was safe. For a few more days, anyway.  
  
The familiar rose tint to the world. He was used to that, by now. He only saw the full spectrum of color in his dreams. But there was something new, a little bar of black at the top of his field of vision.  
  
"You should be able to see the monitor, across the top there. That bar will gradually get shorter as you run out of quartz. You see it about to disappear, you close your eyes in a hurry, got it?"  
  
He could look at her now, see her eyes, even if she couldn't ever see his. "Thanks, Claire. That'll be a big help."  
  
"Just doing my job." Her smile put the lie to that. God, it was good to be able to see!  
  
They both turned their heads as the door to the Keep slid open. His partner, Hobbes, strolled in.  
  
"Hey, partner. Hi, Claire. The 'fish says you've got a new toy for us to try out."  
  
He looked over the new goggles. Darien noticed that the shorter man's gaze also lingered on the Keeper a little longer than it needed to.  
  
"Nice, very nice. You do good work." Through the red lenses he couldn't see Claire flush at Hobbes' direct gaze and compliment, but he could feel it nonetheless. Darien swung his legs around and got out of the chair as gracefully as he could, coming in between the two of them as he did so. Hobbes turned to his partner smoothly. "So, how's the hero of the hour?"  
  
"Hero, me? Nah, I'm just a human blowtorch. You're the one that sniffed out where everybody had disappeared to, before they all asphyxiated."  
  
"Damn right!" Hobbes agreed cheerfully. "Let's hear it for the ol' Bobby Hobbes instincts!"  
  
"Shall we hit that old quarry, partner? Plenty of things to blast away at, and no passers-by." Darien steered his partner towards the door, flashing Claire one last smile on the way out. She rolled her eyes at the two of them and turned back to her work.  
  
  
  
  
Afterword:  
  
The idea of combining Darien with Scott in this way didn't exactly come to me in a dream, it was just lying there waiting for me as I woke up one morning. After that, it seemed obvious to mix Claire and Jean Gray; see if you can spot where she's using her telekinesis. The hint that Hobbes is Wolverine is much more subtle, but I just couldn't come up with anything better, and it is just a minor point anyway. I thought about having the Official use telepathy with Darien in their scene, but I changed my mind when I decided it was much more interesting to leave it up in the air who the Official is equivalent to. Is he Professor X? Or Magneto?  
  
Any further adventures of Darien Fawkes, Eye-Man will have to depend on my sleepy imagination. You want sequels, talk to the sandman!  
  



End file.
